Homestay-A Taste of Native Life

Sunday, March 22, 2009

These photos which was taken during my trip back home on Christmas 2008 is long overdue. Amid a busy activities during Christmas, I managed to follow my father to one of the orchard that we have at the foot of the mountain.

My father is actually the village handyman. As far as I can remember, he has been doing odd jobs around the village, be it a carpentering, building pig or chicken hen, installing and repairing the water pipes which originated from the mountain, or just helping my mother with the farm. He is always available whenever the villagers need his service.

At the age of 60s, my father seems to be shrinking physically in my eyes, but his movement is still agile, defying his real age. I remembered when I was about 14, my father asked me to follow him to the orchard at the mountain. I was so impressed to see my father climbing a very tall and thin 'langsat' tree without any help. The tree first branch was very high, yet he made the climbing look so easy. That is one memory I could never erased from my mind.

When I heard that our 'tampoi' tree was fruiting, I requested my father to tag along.

Tampoi have quite a thick outer shell, and yet this shell can easily disintegrate upon impact. We found that most of the branches is stuck among the forest vegetation and it's neighboring trees, so my father decided to chop off the branches loaded with the tampoi. He would lower down the branch carefully. To poke the tampoi to make it drop was a big no-no.

See the tampoi bundle? Hmm.. tampoi is one of my favorite seasonal fruit beside mangosteen.

The inner soft pulp of tampoi is very succulent, sweet and fragrant. Too bad it is not easily found in KL area.